


9. Terra Incognita

by Anonymous



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, Marauders' Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-11
Updated: 2015-04-11
Packaged: 2018-03-22 10:10:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3724969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time I see him I think, there’s a boy. There are his eyes, his nose his mouth. It’s a bit asymmetrical to the left and his tooth might be a bit chipped. There’s a freckle right before his ear. His hair sometimes wakes up in straight angles. He shares his class notes, I share my toast.</p>
            </blockquote>





	9. Terra Incognita

 

_The noble digit of connection times itself, a nous away from the perfect number._   
_(Pythagorean numerology)_

 

1.

 

1

Clack, clock, tick, beat, my mind is a machine and my present is a ghost. I live with three boys and four shadows amongst red draperies, my mother sends me her shame, Potter’s mother sends me a box of biscuits. I’ve never met that woman in my life.

2

There are a lot of girls tangling in the tower’s warm fireplace air, with their skirts and their eyelashes and fingers and elbows always pointy. A redhead slaps me on the second day; my acquaintances did not seem even one bit as disturbed as I was.

3

I hide under the bed when I eat the biscuits. Potter joins me at some point, asks if I’d like to exchange mine for his star ones.  
“She knows I like the circles best, they taste like Christmas a lot, sorry mate. Besides, stars seem more fitting for you, don’t they?” What he leaves unsaid is the wonder in his eyes, why I would get anything at all from his mother, and I’m breaths away from it as well, but then the slumber bell rings and he launches forward for his pyjamas.

4

“Every normal boy is in love with Lily Evans”  
I’m sure I’ve never seen boys this vain over a girl, but it’s fun and it makes me a part of something for once, and she’s not half bad at all. Once you get past the elbows.

5

“Make friends with that boy eventually, yeah?”  
“Keep that mud splatter off of your lacquered shoes, Sirius.”  
Letter by letter, I grow to like his mother more.

6

I’m sick with a cough. Remus is in the bed next to mine and no one will tell me why. I thought he was home.

7

The Potters send me cough-juice and it tastes like fire, but I’m out of the hospital wing in mere hours.

8

The first time I look at him I think, there’s a boy, a friend. He laughs at my jokes for two years straight and only lets himself tremble with anxiety once. He shares his class notes, I share my toast. I entirely forget I saw him there.

9

_Hey, Reg! Do excuse my horrific handwriting but SOMEONE is aiming candy corns at my nose. Which is NOT big, is it?? Is my nose big, Reg? You would’ve told me, right?_   
_This boy from my dormitory, Remus (he talks all funny); he said it’s so pointy I could use it for a wand if I lose mine. I told him his closely resembles aunt Druella’s summer hat, it’s THAT BIG. I like it though. Don’t tell anyone, but everyone has really nice noses here._   
_Hogwarts is GREAT, lovely, charming even (hehe). I know mother’s really not very excited at all about it, but I’m having so much fun, it’s like that time when we found the closet door in the west wing, except it doesn’t have you and that’s a bit lame. Don’t tell yourself I said that. Cross that sentence. Now. Good._   
_I miss you most ardently, father was right; brothers oughtn’t to be separated, ever. You’re still the same whine baby, I hope. Nobody whines here, not as much as you anyway and that only makes my missings worse._   
_I can’t WAIT until you come here eventually; you have to meet my dorm-mates. They’re sometimes also not lovely but the Potter’s mom sometimes sends me biscuits on Sundays, so that’s alright._   
_Write me back!_   
  
_All of my love,_   
_~~Ci~~  Sincerely, Sirius O. B._

***

10

Oh.

11

It’s alright, though.

12

James asks his mother for extra biscuits and Peter levitates tea all the way from the kitchens and I hold Remus (down) as we wait, with a candle in his lap and heat reflecting on my fingers. He’s more afraid than I am and it feels surreal to see him this shaky, his angles and bones usually so deeply rooted into the earth you can smell the soil in his hair, and I still can, so he mustn’t be too far gone, but he’s going, so I anchor.   
We’re there for him and he won’t believe us and something hurts on the inside when I think about how we’re the first to ever stick around properly.

13

It’s winter break and sometimes Regulus can’t sleep, so he sneaks into my bed and asks for stories about the boy. Not boys. I tell him of my friends and my teachers, I tell him about James’ storm-like hair and Pete’s mom who once sent a howler and a pair of fuzzy socks with the same owl. He only asks about Remus, though, your eyes light up so bright when you mention him, he says, I’m not afraid of the dark anymore.

14

James keeps telling me he will be fine, but I can’t force myself to even blink during full moon nights. I sneak up in the Astronomy tower and hide myself behind the column, I strain my ears to hear him and I’m not sure what I expect exactly. Soft sighs and fingers on fabric, mouth sticky with jam cracking up a smile.   
All I hear is aching howls, crisp and prolonged in the humid morning air, but it could be the wind, I tell myself, it’s the wind.

15

No boy deserves to suffer this much. It’s my second time in the hospital wing and I can only wish I was the ill one and not him. He sighs softly and drags his finger over the covers, Peter’s face is so pale it’s blue and I can feel Remus is about to apologise, to say he’s sorry for getting us involved, so I shut him up with chocolate frogs and transfiguration lesson stories.

16

Lily Evans seems almost irrelevant. I keep dozing off during History of Magic every day, until James makes me drink honeyed milk right before the slumber bell and orders me to sleep and it’s only then that I remember she exists at all.  
How would you, short Lily with the sharp elbows, help our Remus Lupin?

17

When we finally go out, there’s snow in his eyelashes. I shiver myself to sleep.

18

Spring comes, summer comes, storms awaken, and I think, I think they smell like someone.  
We ride the train home with the window wide open and dirt still under our nails.

 

2.

1

_The first time I see him I think, there’s a boy. There are his eyes, his nose his mouth. It’s a bit asymmetrical to the left and his tooth might be a bit chipped. There’s a freckle right before his ear. His hair sometimes wakes up in straight angles. He shares his class notes, I share my toast._

2

Peter and I hide under the great hall’s Gryffindor table, so I can teach him what I remember of the ancient philosophers and newer poets. He sneezes from the dust in the book in his lap, but keeps reading poems about girls with hair of fire.   
It’s then I realise, I like Lily in a way that’s so much different from the way James, Pete and Remus do. But I don’t feel alone, so I talk about Poe instead.

3

“Every normal boy is in love with Lily Evans.” I look in the mirror and try to will my hair into a redder shade, but it won’t work, so I run off to join the poker game on the floor.

4

Cousin Cissa is pregnant, and she’s 16. My mom writes to me I will drop out of Hogwarts in three years to fulfil my duty as an heir and even though Remus is the only one in the dorm, he makes a three men’s worthy show of burning the letter by the window. You’re not leaving, he says, you never are. >

5

Regulus won’t understand. I thought you wanted to be here, he says, here with me, with your friend, with your brother, and I feel like I’m betraying him by even admitting to myself I have three more brothers now, he can’t expect me to choose between them this lightly.   
Water’s in your veins, he writes, not blood, and it’s the last letter I receive that year.

6

< The flash of teeth in his smile at me reminds me of something sweet and vital, like milk, like water, like rain. It’s the first time I think something might be off.

7

Я помню чудное мгновеньe

8

The smell of vinyl is a new thing. James’ laughter is so loud along with Bowie, I feel I won’t be able to breathe soon and Lily’s skirt is rippling rhythmically, one of her knee socks is slipping off. I want to know if he notices, but I can’t see his face. I want to know if it’s still a mirror of James’ and Pete’s. And then I realise, maybe I don’t.

9

He tells me I’m a daft idiot, and I try not to feel too happy.

 

***

 

10

When it’s 3AM and everyone’s asleep, we make up words. The fireplace light itches into my skin and his jumper is the colour of the tie I got for my seventh birthday. His brow is creasing, rainy days ought to just be called rainsdays, we agree, it sounds poetic and fittingly magical, and then his mind is off on its way again, looking for a word to describe the flowers frost draws on window glass. I look for a word to describe the reason I sigh when our knees touch. His pyjama bottoms have a wrinkle there now and it’s just the two of us, all alone in this world.

11

It’s somewhere on the line between late morning and early night when we share a fag for the first time; I have the vague idea we both should be in class, but it’s raining and there’s a window and it’s open and the humid air smells like raw meat and this all seems like more than a valid reason to ditch.

12

We should have each other to tea, huh?  
We should have each other with cream.

13

_Write to me._   
_-S_

14

During winter break his parents invite us over and I sneak out to go as well. There’s hot chocolate, baby photo albums and satellite TV, lots of cups on all of the shelves and embroidered ships in wooden frames on the walls. Their kitchen smells sticky, like a home, and when James gets sick and stays in to play cards with Pete, Remus shows me how to ride a bike.

15

Blood is on your tongue as well as your hands  
Archaic and content you just wash them off

16

On the train to Hogwarts I rest my feet in his lap, the seat across from mine, and all he does is place his book on top, looking up at me with the corners of his eyes all wrinkly, like when he managed to charm that paper crane to fly. James takes Pete for liquorice wands and once they’re out the door, Remus starts reading out loud to me. It’s Russian and I don’t understand anything, but I shut my eyes, shut my mouth, shut my mind and listen.

17

_I know you read these damn you._   
_~~F~~ We’ll talk once I get home._   
_You better get over whatever the hell’s gotten into you by then._   
_Won’t even look at me in the hallways the hell’s up with that._   
_-S_

18

Year 4 is the moment I notice the ever settling comfortable silence between me and Remus, like dust to keep us through the ages, like stale air to preserve us; other people can’t stand it, we thrive in it, he, who is alone for a lifetime, cursed into keeping his thoughts as far away as he can from others, and I, not abandoned, but still alone. Remus knows nothing of my brother, yet senses his lack much like I do, and as though that alone is almost enough to fill the gap he has left.

.1

Year 4 is the moment I wonder for the first time, what would fill the gap Remus would leave one day (soon).

3.

 

1

Fifth year arrives with the early owl mail, like freshly baked bread, except it tastes like growth and the shimmer of a prefect badge. I feel my summer pass right through, night by night and dreams in black and white, the itch to hear a wolf howling at the June moon, the scratch to wish to howl yourself.

2

Peter moves his nose when he speaks, James chews with his mouth open and Remus looks so visibly worn, no, grown up, definitely, he’s taller and he’s bonier and his eyelids must be heavier too since he keeps looking down. The prefect badge is neatly pinned on his jumper and his tie is neatly tied and his fingers are neatly resting in his lap. He looks pointedly through the window and words his sentences like you would clean a hospital. I feel like a mess.

3

“I swear, sometimes I think full moons hurt you more than they hurt him.”

I dream of black and white pressure near my chest that night, the shape of a boy’s leg into my side and hazy strands of hair on my neck. I wake up to velvet curtains, a creaky wooden floor and two mouths snoring almost synchronously. He is nowhere to be seen.

4

On October the 14 I see him kiss McKinnon after prefect duty and I breathe just fine. I don’t think about anything.

5

Remus Lupin has a way with his hands I try not to think about. Sometimes I catch myself watching not him, but his hands, his cracky knuckles and the veins underneath his palm, his tiny movements as he talks. His fingers turn milk yellow around the quill and blood red in the morning jam and I think, this is what you do to my soul; this is what you do to my body.

6

James pinches my neck and the ink I spill on Remus’ parchment forms the shape of a hickey I saw right underneath his chin this morning.  
“What about it, mate? Map, Moony said. We oughtta make one aye?”  
Sound muffles as I nod and feel paper pulled underneath my sweating fingertips. They stick and screech somehow through and to my bones and this - this is exactly what I’m feeling about it, I feel like screeching bones and ruined parchment.

7

Two days before winter break, I watch the family crest melt off of my letter, shrivelled to a pathetic ball, top of a torch, tip of a matchstick, as if its words should sting any less.  
“You can come spend the hols with the family, aye?” he says, mouth full, and before I can object, adds “Always been me ma’s favourite. Don’t ask why.”  
No one can ever say no to Hope Lupin.

8

That’s what I told myself at least.

9

I breathe in and breathe out and repeat it all over and try not to count how many times. His dad likes me a lot and his mom keeps touching my hair and looking at him when she thinks I’m not paying attention, and I’m not sure if it’s some fear for her child, eternally woven into her bones, or if I should just not think about it.

.1

I’m neck deep in flour and my shortcake closely resembles a fat, sad looking mermaid, stuck to the pan, but Mom Lupin kisses me on the cheek and says it’s lovely. Remus says it looks utterly revolting despite being food and, that says something Sirius, look at yourself and the choices you make, but comes into the kitchen and chips off a bit of the crust and doesn’t immediately die of food poisoning, so it’s okay.

.2

She smiles at me and then at him and there are so many herbs for the tea and I can still taste apple and mint when we go back. And the week after. And five days before summer.

 

***

 

10

“We should decorate it, you know. There be ghosts or something. Once we’ve figured out the empty spaces” James whispers during transfiguration one Tuesday (Rainsday) and I nod, counting in my head, always counting and clicking, grids and maths and straight angles, curves to hallways, walls to lines.

.1

Mapmaking is a difficult art. I’ve gotten acquainted with all tiny wrinkles and squeaks of the hallways and cracks of this castle, all hidden runes and names etched into the stone walls of hidden passageways. No empty, unfamiliar spaces did I leave unknown.

11

Dust settles over my hair, I’m an unused typewriter, always used to babble. If I tried to speak only the creaking of my rusty metal parts would come out and even then, no one would listen.

.1

I look in the mirror and try to will my skin into a smoother tone. He likes his girls soft and happy, and I resemble a fog – the heavy kind, or pressed second day snow, dense, thick, hard, fragile, like ice, but without the sharp. I’m dull, I’m full of sand, my skin is in puddles, I’m far away.

.2

When he says it’s ok I know he doesn’t mean it. I can’t see his mother’s tea reflected in his voice anymore, it’s all greased, but it’s just teeth, fangs, nails, ready to shred. Tired. I’ve filed his fury down to anger, his anger – down to apathy. If I keep asking him, he might stand me one day.

.3

I can’t hear his bed creak at night anymore and I wonder if I’ve finally drowned in silence, let the last pinch of air out of my lungs, so I no longer hear anything. I wonder if he’s simply started sleeping better, now that I’m gone.

0

I wonder if he’s simply better off, now that I’m gone.

12

-

18

Of course it isn’t ok, he passes me his fag, but I forgave you anyway. The sky cracks like an egg and I watch the June sunrise leak out, slowly, steadily. I can feel his breaths hitch and I hope with all my might that James never interrupts this.

This egg is bad, but the only one I’d have, so it’ll do.

 

4.

 

1

Sixth year hangs above my head like a big raindrop, ready to drown, and I stand in its humid shadow, barely out of reach. It hangs by a thread and threatens to take everything I have away, and I grin at it like it’s the sun. He’s forgiven me, but James hasn’t, and it shows the moment I knock on his door at 3AM sharp and talk to him like to a brother.

Sixth year starts a countdown, slowed down, like on a video cassette. We held your world, Atlas, and now you want it back. Voices with their pitch down low, arms stretched up, bones about to break.

2

The train is silent and angry. Peter is angry with James for not talking to me. I am angry with Peter because it’s none of his business. James is angry with me, because he thinks I should still have no say in it.

Remus hums without content and watches me as he licks his finger to flip the page.

3

Cracks when he tells him to and I wonder if he keeps us all under control like this. James hangs around his pinkie; Pete has his name written all over his veins. I am the curved line in his fingerprints. I connect thumb to middle to tongue to paper to

4

Mapmaking is a difficult art. I’ve gotten acquainted with all tiny wrinkles and squeaks of the hallways (like Peter) and cracks of this castle (like James), all hidden runes and names etched into the stone walls of hidden passageways (like his and mine and his and his and his).

No empty, unfamiliar spaces did I leave unknown.

5

It’s almost like it’s normal. I think about him like water leaking down the walls. Inevitable, inadvisable. I turn a corner and he’s there and I have to find someone to fix that wall before it turns green and starts smelling bad.

6

I find that someone in the face of a ginger 7th year, who does his job quite well. If it doesn’t quite work out it’s because the paint he bought is cheap, not because my house is under a lake and the cracks expand with every sigh Remus makes in his sleep.

7

Clack, clock, tick, beat, my mind is a machine and my present is a ghost. I live with three boys and four shadows amongst red draperies. I am a fog. I slip through your window and drink your love out of your mouth, like sweet flower juice or honey or

8

It’s almost like it’s okay. I thought about it like water leaking down the walls. Inevitable, inadvisable. I turn a corner and she’s there, with her skirt and her elbow, and he’s kissing her, and there’s an angle down his cheek, an angle I’ve named after myself, because it’s mine to find and conquer, mine, mineminemine

9

On the train back home he sleeps with his mouth closed.

 

***

 

10

In year 7 someone kicks the clock and it starts ticking full-speed, as if to make up for all the time it let tickle slowly. I gave you a chance, it says, and you let it pass right by you. You weren’t meant to come apart at the seams like this.

We didn’t, I say, we’re quits, even, equal, balanced.

11

Awkwardness fills the space between us, months or years late. He has no idea where to place his angles and I have no idea how to stop looking at them. Like we’re thirteen again, but it’s desperate and frantic, like speeding up a mating dance, the spiral we’ve been drawing since we first met, bound to connect at the centre, either not quite and only vaguely, or hard, with the force of a ship sinking and dragging us both along. Best case scenario.

12

I noticed you undress with your back to me lately, he says, like it’s an inside joke for him and himself only, his mouth stretched out almost to a curl. I’m the third wheel friend in this bathroom of two. He flicks his pants at me and shower steam fills my lungs.

13

I’ve forgotten what it feels like to touch someone without realising.

I’m sore and conscious. Remus grins and it’s like showing his teeth, but somehow at everyone else, not at me.

14

I try walking on eggshells until the point when I realise they’re from all the sunrises he’s been having without me. About time you came here, he says and fetches me my pack of cigarettes. Our feet hang from the tower and his hand is red and cold when it touches mine. The air smells raw, like meat, and I’m missing something.

Songbirds.

15

My hand is warm and dry when it touches his. He looks at me with his eyes all wrinkly, like when he charmed that paper crane to fly, like I’m too slow to catch his jokes, like he doesn’t mind.

16

He pulls me behind a corner and I automatically look into the map, almost pointedly, anywhere but him. Lines and lines of math and walls and names and steps, none of them near us. The closest thing is a curly text, right next to the heel of his left foot, there be ghosts, and I think, yes, I think, this makes sense.

17

He tells me I’m a daft idiot, and just that one time, I let myself feel happy.

18

The first time I kiss him, I don’t think. There’s a boy, a friend. The opening and the close of the stream in my head. He’s laughed at my jokes and he’s beaten up my love like brand new shoes. I make no noise around his ankles; he no longer sticks his angles in my skin. We fit. We will in the future. He’ll share his class notes, I’ll share my toast.

 

 


End file.
